Valve trumpet



2, 1960 D. SHUMAN 2,947,211

VALVE TRUMPET Original Filed July '7. 1955 INVENTOR flW/s /mm/v BY WATTORNEYS' VALVE TRUMPET Davis Shuman, 741 Bradford St., Brooklyn 7,N.Y.

Continuation of application Ser. No. 529,605, July 7, 1955. Thisapplication Sept. 17, 1958, Ser. No. 762,197

1 Claim. (Cl. 84-388) This invention relates to horns and moreparticularly to valve trumpets.

Heretofore valve trumpets have been made with the bell, valve casingsand lead pipe rigidly fixed to one another by means of immovableconnections and connecting braces and as a result a relatively smallspace is available for the trumpeters left hand and fingers to grip theinstrument when it is held in a playing position. When the mouth pieceis properly placed on the players lips the bell is very often pointeddirectly into the music stand and the trumpeter must turn his head leftor right, up or doWn, or must sometimes raise or lower the stand inorder to avoid this condition. Further, when playing loud passages it isperfectly satisfactory to point the bell in a forward direction, butwith soft passages it is diificult to keep the volume down in such aposition. In addition, the conventional trumpet is so constructed that aperson with large hands or a left handed player finds it very awkward tohandle the instrument in a normal and easy manner.

I am aware that it has been proposed to provide wind instruments withbells rotatably attached to the bell section in order to direct themusic in the desired direction and also that wind instruments have beenprovided with bells bent from the normal plane of the bell section.These constructions, however, while adaptable to large wind instruments,have not been particularly adaptable to valve trumpets and have not inany event solved the problem of restricted hand space immediatelysurrounding the valves.

I have now found that these difficulties may be avoided if the entirebell assembly is attached to the remainder of the trumpet in adetachable and rotatable manner so that the bell may be rotated to pointin various angular directions in a plurality of planes.

It is accordingly a primary object of the present invention to provide avalve trumpet with a detachable and removable bell assembly which may beconveniently played by a person with large hands or by a person who maybe left handed.

It is another object of the invention to provide a valve trumpet havinga movable bell assembly which may be positioned and adjusted to variousangular directions in a plurality of planes.

It is another object of the invention to provide an improved valvetrumpet.

Further objects and advantages of the invention will become apparentupon reference to the following specification and claim and the appendeddrawings wherein:

Figure 1 is a side elevation of a valve trumpet constructed according tomy invention;

Figure 2 is a side elevation of a valve trumpet constructed according tomy invention with the bell assembly rotated approximately from theposition which it occupies in Figure 1;

Figure 3 is a side elevation of a valve trumpet constructed according tomy invention with the bell assembly rotated approximately 270 from theposition which it occupies in Figure l; and

Figure 4 is an elevation of the bell assembly of a trumpet constructedaccording to my invention.

Referring more particularly to the figures of the drawing there is shownin Figure l a valve trumpet 1E having a conventional valve casingarrangement 12, lead pipe 14 and mouth piece 16. According to myinvention the bell assembly 17, comprising bell 18, bell section 20,bell how 22 and branch section 26, is formed separately from the rest ofthe instrument, as may be seen in Figure 4,.

and is rotatably attached to a tapered ferrule 24 in communication withthe valve casing. The branch section 26 of the movable bell assembly ispreferably provided with a tapered end which mates with the taperedferrule 24 and the bell assembly may be locked into position by means ofany suitable lock-out arrangement.

While the branch section of conventional trumpets normally lies in thesame plane as the axis of the bell and bell section it is a feature ofmy invention that the branch section 26 is bent slightly out of thisplane as may clearly be seen in Figure 4. With this construction andwith the rotatable connection at the ferrule 24 the trumpeter may adjustthe bell into a large plurality of planes by simply rotating the bellassembly about the ferrule 24. This is clearly shown in Figures 1, 2 and3 illustrating the bell assembly in three widely separated positions. Itwill be clear from these figures that a person with large hands or aleft handed person may so rotate and position the bell assembly as toleave ample room for either hand to operate the valves in completefreedom. The bell and bell section may be angularly positioned to securethe desired volume or other effects and, as a result of my construction,the conventional brace between the bell section and remainder of theinstrument is eliminated so that the bell is free to vibrate much morefreely than is usually possible. It will thus be apparent that I haveprovided a novel valve trumpet having many advantages over theconventional instrument. The instrument may be sold with a number ofbells so that the player may select the proper bell for the music playedand the acoustics found in the studio, theater or ballroom.

The invention may be embodied in other specific forms without departingfrom the spirit or essential characteristics thereof. The presentembodiment is therefore to be 3 What is claimed and desired to besecured by United States Letters Patent is:

In a valve trumpet having a valve casing and a lead pipe connectedthereto, valves in said valve casing, a

ferrule attached to said valve casing, an integral bell assemblycomprising a bell and bell section, said bell and bell section having acommon longitudinal axis generally normal to the axes of said valves,said bell and bell section being of a total length substantially equalto the total length of said trumpet, a bell bow connected at one end tosaid bell section, and a branch section attached to the other end ofsaid bell bow, said bell bow having a bend out of aplane containing theaxis of said bell and bell section, said branch section being rotatablyattached s V '4 1 a to said ferrule so as to be rotatable beneath saidvalve casing about its own axis through the greater part of a circle.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS D.45,091 Johnson Dec, 30, 1913 784,201 Barrett Mar. 7, 1905 1,176,013 WoodMar. 21, 1916 1,634,355 Heald -a July 5, 1927 FOREIGN PATENTS 1,284Great Britain 1859

